


The edgeshine of her teeth

by Kartaylir



Category: A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/F, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:00:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25122055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kartaylir/pseuds/Kartaylir
Summary: No matter what pleasures it brings, some prices are too high for immortality.
Relationships: Mahit Dzmare/Nineteen Adze
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9
Collections: Little Black Dress Exchange 2020





	The edgeshine of her teeth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts).



The bathroom seems a far smaller place as we stare at each other. It seems my words have forced Mahit Dzmare to pause. She now knows of just what technology Yskander had offered my emperor, just what of Lsel their last ambassador had given away.

And then I realize that she’s staring at my teeth. But her hand smells of blood beneath the bandages, and I’d not steeled myself to expect it. When she’d shown up bloodied by what remained of Fifteen Engine I’d been forewarned. She sees the truth now, if she can make sense of it.

“He gave the Emperor what you wouldn’t,” she says, and I wonder just what stories of blood they’ve let out to Lsel. Teeth shining white as a barbarian’s; curses even brave poets only ever alluded around.

“Couldn’t. Now,” I say. No doubt she’s clever enough to feel the weight of that. The knife-edge of oaths behind it. Almost I say this, if only to see how her eyes narrow when I once again call her clever. Almost speak that I would lay my own heart out upon an altar for my emperor, but even for him I would not inflict this curse. Not to those of the world or otherwise.

She looks up at me from her impromptu seat and her expression turns to something stiff, unreadable save for that she’s hidden her first reaction.She raises her unharmed hand to my cheek. “Thank you,” she says, and I do not resist when she pulls my head down to kiss me.

Her mouth is warm, her lips taste of salt. Her tongue is quick to find its way behind my teeth, to cut just upon the tip of them so that I can taste the copper in her blood. Her hand wraps behind my neck and I hit my knee as she pulls me in. But a little pain has never mattered to be before.

Then her injured hand is between my breasts, the touch rough and slow as she slides it beneath the white of my shirt. A drop of blood falls free from our mouths and I do not know where it lands. Nor can I force myself to care beyond wondering.

All too soon she breaks the kiss. I can feel that cloth-like touch of bandaged skin move down, slip into my bra, her fingers spread over my flesh.

I’m glad she didn’t lose them. And so I let her hold me back, for now.

She tilts her head toward me with that too-wide smile, the way she widens her eyes as well to make it clear. How adept she is; under other circumstances I’d be pleased to watch her make her way through the court, through patricians of all classes. But war only ever waits so long.

“But as for the rest of it, I fear I’ve little guidance.” Her forefinger pushes under my lip to run across the line of teeth. “For all I’ve heard of your fascination with blood, this topic never made it past the censors.”

There are a thousand details I could give her, some distractions,some tales of people and things collected and held close. Terrors made sharper by the few delights amid them. But I have ever preferred to cut to the heart of the matter when I can. And so all I say is simple. “Ambassador, you speak as if you hope I’ll show you.”

Another pause, her hands still, her eyes peering over me. I’d once been told I was beautiful by Lsel’s standards, tall and sharp and cutting. Perhaps that is what she sees in me, or merely the danger of the world laid bare and shining before her.

Then she pulls her finger down from my teeth, presses the pad of her forefinger against the sharpness of them. I feel the prick of it as I break her skin, how my tongue winds its way over every bit of blood. There will be no shortage of it, so long as it remains there. Such wounds are slow to clot beneath my touch.

“I pick the best places,” Mahit mutters, and I do not need my mouth free to show my smile. This is nothing compared to the quarters on a battleship. Or, I suspect, the space she had to to herself on Lsel Station.

So I lean back in and let my hand run down her chest. Over the familiar drape of white cloth, of my clothes that still don’t quite fit to her height. She spreads her legs where she sits and I guide my calloused hand down between them. In this I can see how slow the skin has grown tight against my bones, the line of hip and stomach beneath her clothing. Each second heightened for observation by the taste of her blood. Then she squeezes her hand upon my breast and I slip my fingers into the gap between clothing and flesh. She’s not quite wet, but her breathing is already hurried. Adrenaline taking its time to abate.

Mahit jerks at this touch, reaches for my jacket with the indirect touch of bandaged fingers. Such feels even more muffled as it runs over the soon exposed, uneven surface of one of many scars.

“I chose this one,” I say, the words rough around her bloodied forefinger.

At first her eyes narrow. Then she laughs. Relief, perhaps. Amusement. Draws her finger back just enough so that I’m merely licking at the tip, drawing out the crimson that threatens to pool around the edges of her fingernail.

But such isn’t the only attention I give her. I delve further between her legs, feeling between the folds until my own hand is truly wet. From the touch, she still wears her own undergarments; another hidden thing of her. No doubt her _askretra_ could cast a hundred poems for this, things of blood over porcelain white, of flowers new-bloomed or opened to full maturity. I’ll leave what I must say to my hands.

Mahit twists so that my fingers jut into her, pressure her clit as they slowly slip inside. My tongue slips down to explore the gap between her thumb and forefinger; I wish to know this hand as well as the other.

Said other hand keeps returning it to my breast, to the scars exposed on arms and legs alike.

Finally she pulls me down to straddle her knee and shoves my hand further in with the same gesture. Moves her grasp from my breast to hip, tugs and pushes until we achieve our own rhythm. My fingers pressing, moving in and out as I draw a sharper and sharper pattern of breath from her.

She’s quiet in this, in a way that speaks of stolen moments even as her body shakes. Her lips are muffled in my hair and I’m drunk on the slow drip of blood she’s given me. I barely notice when the gasps of her breathing soften into their usual pattern again, when she shifts herself back from the touch of my hand.

Her finger slips out from the grasp of my tongue and her hand drifts down from my mouth. Leaves a bloodied fingerprint on my cheek before she sets it on my chest. Mahit doesn’t grimace as my smile, bloodstained though it might be. Instead she raises her hand in question, gestures down and then back toward my lips.

I bow my head to touch her fingers first with my lips, then tongue, then bite into the soft portion of flesh and sate myself on her warmth. The trickle of blood as her other hand slowly runs back up my chest, pinches at breast and nipple as my eyes close in the ecstasy of it. Perhaps I’ll leave her with a scar, as if this were another oath cast in blood.

It’s been so long since I’ve had a new taste to lose myself in. I drift on the heat of it for seconds that feel like years before I return to myself. Before I open my eyes and look down to her.

“Ambassador,” I say, “you should go attend to your mail. Seven Scale should have it still.”

There’s a dark look in her eyes before she nods. Good. She can’t afford to put aside suspicion, not amid this slow-building crisis of the world.

Mahit leaves as I lick the last remnants of still-wet blood from my lips.


End file.
